my mother couldn't regulate herself. so i learned to. | musing no. 115
you can't be close to someone and be their regulation at the same time. one will always cost you the other.
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the architecture of self: musing no. 101 → musing no. 102 → musing no. 103 → musing no. 104 → musing no. 105 → musing no. 106 → musing no. 107 → musing no. 108 → musing no. 109 → musing no. 110 → musing no. 111 → musing no. 112 → musing no. 113 → musing no. 114
the architecture of trust: musing no. 90 → musing no. 91 → musing no. 92 → musing no. 93 → musing no. 94 → musing no. 95 → musing no. 96 → musing no. 97 → musing no. 98 → musing no. 99
the architecture of control: musing no. 74 → musing no. 75 → musing no. 76 → musing no. 77 → musing no. 78 → musing no. 79 → musing no. 80 → musing no. 81 → musing no. 82 → musing no. 83 → musing no. 84 → musing no. 85 → musing no. 86 → musing no. 87 → musing no. 88 → musing no. 89
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**note — musings no. 115 + 116 are interludes between the architecture of self arc and the architecture of intimacy arc. no pressure. no mechanism. just the writing.**
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my mother couldn’t regulate herself.
when things went wrong —
and things went wrong often —
everyone paid.
not because she was cruel.
because she was uncontained.
her nervous system had no floor.
so it used ours.
—
i don’t remember learning to read the room.
i just remember always knowing
what the room was feeling.
temperature.
pressure.
proximity to explosion.
i was wired for it by age six.
maybe earlier.
it wasn’t a skill.
it was a survival mechanism.
—
you don’t grow out of that.
you carry it into every relationship,
every workplace,
every friendship
where someone’s volatility
starts leaking into your stillness.
and you do what you were trained to do.
you absorb it.
you soften it.
you take the edge off
so no one else has to.
you make yourself into a buffer
between another person’s chaos
and the rest of the room.
because that’s what kept the peace
when you were small.
—
except it didn’t keep the peace.
it kept everyone else comfortable
while you quietly swallowed glass.
—
for years,
i mistook this for compassion.
i thought love meant
helping people regulate.
staying calm enough
for both of us.
making sure nobody felt abandoned.
i didn’t realize
i had confused love
with emotional labor.
—
i’m in my mid-forties now.
i’ve spent the last few years —
through embodiment work,
through the slow and unglamorous business
of rewiring a nervous system
that was never supposed to carry this weight —
learning to put it down.
not gently.
not apologetically.
putting it down
the way you drop something heavy
that you’ve been holding so long
you forgot you were holding it.
—
what it looks like now:
someone becomes dysregulated
in my presence.
the old version of me
would have moved toward it.
would have adjusted.
would have managed it
the way you manage a spill —
quietly.
immediately.
before it spreads.
the current version of me
goes still.
and then,
if necessary,
says:
this is for you to figure out.
this isn’t my problem.
—
that sentence used to feel like cruelty.
now it feels like accuracy.
i can care about someone
without carrying them.
because someone’s dysregulation
is not a problem i created.
it is not a problem
i can solve.
and attempting to solve it
costs something
i am no longer willing to spend.
—
i’m naming my mother here intentionally.
not to wound her.
not for the performance of it.
but because unnamed origins
stay invisible.
and invisible patterns
feel like personality.
this one isn’t my personality.
it’s something i learned
in a house
where the weather inside
was always someone else’s decision.
—
if you grew up in that house too —
or if you’ve been in relationships
that put you back in it —
you know what it’s like
to feel responsible
for someone’s internal weather.
you know the hypervigilance.
the micro-adjustments.
the way you scan
before you speak.
you know how exhausting it is
to be inside your own life
and still be managing
someone else’s emotional temperature.
—
you’re allowed to stop.
even if stopping
makes someone uncomfortable.
even if they accuse you
of becoming cold.
because boundaries
often look like abandonment
to people
who expected unlimited access.
not because it’s their fault.
not because you’re owed
an apology.
but because the original reason
you started
was a child’s attempt
at safety.
and you are not
a child anymore.
—
the person who is reading this
and recognizing themselves
as the one who dumps —
i’m not interested
in shaming you.
but i want you
to notice something.
the people around you
are not regulating with you.
they are regulating
for
you.
there is a difference.
and the cost of that difference
is being paid
by someone
who has been quiet about it
for a very long time.
—
the work here
isn’t beautiful.
it doesn’t resolve cleanly.
there are relationships
i’ve stepped back from.
not dramatically.
without announcement.
because quiet withdrawal
is sometimes
the only honest response
to realizing
you have been
slowly,
consistently
asked to hold something
that was never yours.
—
this connects
to where we’ve been —
the ghosting work.
the avoidance work.
and it connects
to where we’re going.
exhaustion
is not the same thing
as love.
neither is hypervigilance.
neither is becoming
indispensable.
because presence
requires a nervous system
that isn’t already full.
because intimacy —
real intimacy —
cannot exist
where one person
is quietly absorbing
what the other person
refuses to contain.
you cannot be close
to someone
and be their regulation
at the same time.
one
will always
cost you
the other.
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the red room goes deeper into this.
how it forms.
what it costs.
how you exit it.
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the architecture of intimacy.
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